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Making a house a home and a garden home grown.

Cheap kitchen revamp.

There are a lot of blogs out there that tell you how to do this, so I will try to keep this post brief. My kitchen is still a long way from finished, but does look very different to how it was on moving day. So initially after painting the 3 bedrooms, the upstairs loo and the under the stairs cupboard in less than a month (blog to come) I decided to paint the kitchen walls. I thought it would take me half a day most.

What was wrong with the walls you ask, nothing really, but they were yellow meringue pie yellow- in a satin finish. I want to make it clear I really dislike a satin finish on a wall, and every single wall in this house was painted in a satin finish. The problem with satin being that it draws attention to any cracks or imperfections in the walls, a matt finish seems to diffuse it and smooth it over and just has a more satisfactory feel.

So anyway I went to my scrapstore, who I will mention in a future blog, and look through their selection of paint. I wanted a plain colour, so I could quickly do 2 coats of paint in the small area of walls I have in the kitchen, and that would do, until I get round to doing the full kitchen.

So anyway one of the tins of paint didn’t show what colour it was, but it was matt, I ended up having to ask the woman who was working there, and she spent time opening the tin for me. Only problem was it was yellow. But it was matt finish, so I thought what the hell- lets do it.

And it did look better. And I was ready to pack in the painting for a while and get the house back to normal. But then the boyfriend said he didn’t like the tiles. And really I thought, I’m not that keen on the cupboards.

Obviously they are perfectly serviceable, but slightly dated and not what we would have picked ourselves.

We’re not the tidiest of people anyway, but the busy tiles makes everything look even more cluttered. I’d spent a lot of time updating the kitchen at the old place, so was a shame to take a step back. The kitchen tap is new btw, my Dad replaced the old one due to a leak.

So I ordered a tin of tile paint, this is a thick, smelly paint, that you can paint over the tiles with. I ordered a tin in “muted mushroom” online.

For the cupboards, inspired by various blogs I decided to give chalk paint a go. You can get premixed chalk paint or a powder form that you mix with water. You can also mix your own up from the ingredients, but that sounds more tricky. The powdered paint arrived the next day and I got my mix on.

You have to mix the paint well, to make sure there is no lumps. I think I got it a bit thin, which did mean I needed to do 3 coats of paint. Once mixed up I painted the first cupboard.

I liked it, it went on easily, I hadn’t sanded, just a good wipe down. You can obviously take the doors off to paint them, but this was during a wet English winter, I didn’t have space to have them drying inside and well- I’m lazy.

Soon the cupboards were done. I’m not sure at this point if the tiles look worse or better. Either way it was time to paint them!

So I started to paint the tiles, but then I realised the “muted mushroom” looked pink. Next to the yellow walls, and earthy green cupboards, the combination was a bit odd. But I decided it was best to finish it off anyway.

In some ways we liked it, it has a slightly kitch retro look, but it wasn’t really us. So I ordered some plain white tile paint. Also I decided I should wax the cupboards, to help them last longer.

So the door to the right is waxed, it made them look slighly darker, actually more like the colour we were expecting. And it looks a lot more finished somehow.

So the cupboards were good, but the tiles were still pink and walls still yellow. So in the end I bought another pack of chalk paint and painted the walls slightly off white.

The white paint looked so much nicer than the yellow. I’ve been really pleased with my first experience of chalk paint. And I will have to be a little more careful when choosing colours now. Once the tiles were painted too, it was a big improvement. The whole revamp cost around £50. Obviously it meant we couldn’t really use the kitchen for a week or so. Picture of finished room to follow.